Aveline spent the next two nights decoding fragments from the Loop 1 memory file she'd extracted from Concordia's buried archives.
They came in flashes.
Blood.Glass shattering.Lucien collapsing in her arms.Her own voice, hysterical—begging for time to turn back.
And then—
A white room.A countdown.Her whisper: "Erase me."
She slammed the laptop shut.
Not yet. Not until Lucien was ready.
She wouldn't break his mind just to mend her heart.
Lucien, meanwhile, had begun hearing things.
At first, he thought it was stress—whispers just out of reach when he walked the upper corridors, static flickering in his neural implant that shouldn't have existed.
But it grew worse.
He'd find himself halfway through a sentence and then…Gone.
Snapped into memories that weren't his.
Or weren't supposed to be.
He remembered gripping Aveline's face and saying, "If we die, I'll find you again."
He remembered shouting her name as fire roared down a lab hallway.
He remembered love—fierce, desperate, holy in its rawness.
Jules noticed Lucien's condition deteriorating.
"He's syncing," he told Clara. "Whatever Aveline's done… it's forcing the old timelines to surface."
Clara rubbed her temples. "That wasn't supposed to happen unless both subjects were in direct resonance."
"Maybe they are," Jules said quietly. "Emotionally."
Clara frowned. "We buried Loop 1 for a reason. If it resurfaces…"
She didn't finish the sentence.
Didn't have to.
Aveline met Lucien again in the observatory. It had become their place—quiet, unmonitored, sacred.
He looked pale, sleep-deprived, shaken.
"I need to know," he said before she could speak.
She blinked. "Know what?"
He stepped closer. "Who you are. Who we were. What you're hiding from me."
Her chest ached.
So she pulled the flash drive from her coat pocket.
"If you watch this, you'll remember things not meant for this timeline," she said. "It'll hurt. It might change how you see me."
Lucien took the drive.
"I'd rather break than never know why my heart already belongs to you."
They watched it together.
The footage was grainy, but unmistakable.
Lucien—brilliant, bloodied, dying.Aveline cradling him.The lab in ruins.And her saying to Clara, "Reset it. I'll take the loss. Wipe me. Just… save him."
Lucien didn't speak.
His jaw clenched. His eyes were wet.
"You died for me," he finally said. "And then you lived all this time with the weight of it."
"I chose you," she whispered. "Every time."
And then, slowly, he took her hand.
No promises.
Just fingers entwined through pain and memory.
A new beginning.
But across the compound, a cold voice spoke into a secure line.
"She unlocked Loop 1," Clara said. "It's confirmed."
The reply crackled with static.
"Then execute Protocol Remnant. Before the anomaly spreads."
Clara's hands shook.
"She's just a girl in love."
"No," the voice replied.
"She's a threat who broke the laws of time."